My Darkest Hour
by XxGreenEyedAngelxX
Summary: This is pretty much Edward's life before he meant Bella, beginning just before he was changed into a vampire. Rated T just to be safe. Reviews would be very much appreciated. My first fan fiction!
1. Influenza

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of twilight, or anything like that, that all belongs to Stephenie Meyer

Mother was coughing yet again. Her fits getting more violent and deep every time. I could hear her nurse maids gathering her belongs for the only hospital in Chicago. It hadn't been two days previous that Dr. Cullen had come by the house, it reporting the devastating news of my father's death after only weeks in the medical units. Nothing working. I still idly in my small closet, knees wrapped up under my chin. Just taking in what these last days have brought on.

A cough wracks my own body with a violence that equals that of what my mother suffers. Nothing I would admit. I do my best to muffle it. The last thing I wanted was for mother's maids to be packing my belongings for the hospital. Worse yet, having Dr. Cullen have to make another trip to the house. An hour drive from the hospital because mother was not brought in quickly enough. The blood that comes up with my cough symbolizes my worst fear since the deaths began. But I couldn't distract them. I close my eyes slowly. Allowing a shallow sleep to over come me.

A pale figure stalks slowly through a small meadow. Strangely red eyes fixed upon a young mountain lion. An animal that most only witness through the imagination. The figure slowly approaches the animal. Bent into a predatory stance. Preparing to spring. The lion swerves to face the hunter with a panicked snarl. As though he was able to sense that his death was nearing. It wasn't until this moment, the moment that the lion turned that I realized who the figure was: me. "Edward!" A high, woman's voice rang clearly up the stair well. Tearing me from my tortured dreams. "Come boy!" She yelled. Her weathered voice cracking slightly with effort and irritation. I struggled out of my slightly crouched position, leaned against the close wall on which I had fallen asleep. Opening the heavy wooden door carefully, I stumble out. Making valiant attempt to wipe the sleep from my eyes and face. Opening the only exit there was to my small room, I walk slowly down over the stairs. To be surprised to see my mother leaning for support on the shoulder of Miriam, her maid. Several bags surrounding their feet. Three of them labeled 'Elizabeth Masen', the other four. I was shocked to find my own name. 'Edward Masen Jr.' printed carefully on the face of the bags. It was now apparent that my attempt at muffling my coughing and illness had been in vain.

I stopped at the base of our stairwell unsure of what my next move was expected to be. Breathing heavy, I meet the eyes of my mother. Her emerald green eyes concerned. I knew that the concern was not for herself. Miriam sniffed. Patting my mother's back was she lifted the bags off the ground, gesturing for me to follow them out into the entry way, and out the door. Not that I knew this at that point, but it would be the last time that I ever walked through these doors.

We had not been the richest of the families in our well off neighborhood in the outer skirts of Chicago, but father had, had a well paying enough job to earn what was needed to own certain lucsuries, such as a car. In only the winter of 1918, only my seventeenth year, only around four of our fellows that were left alive owned one as well. A 1900 model T, as father had called it on the occasions that I had seen him and gotten up the courage to speak with him enough to actually get something useful out of it.

We piled in carefully. Mother having been set carefully in the back seat were I was usually bade to. I gripped the roof of the black car carefully, minding my slight off balance as I stepped in after her. My stalky frame having a bit more trouble than her thin, fragile one had. Miriam watched the two of us carefully. Her thin lips pursed as she waited for us to settle. Closing the door closely behind me. I sat carefully down next to my mother. Head lolling slightly from the hurried entrance. Mother looked up slowly. Her bronze hair, which was pulled carefully up into a tight bun, already falling out and matted with sweat. Her frail, chapped lips opening slightly into what looked like a pained smile. Enthasizing the dark, burse like sleepless night marker, as I thought of them as under both of her eyes. Lifting her sickly pale hand slowly from her side, she ran it through my own, troused bronze hair. "My boy." She whispered. Her high voice raspy, cracking involuntarily. To the point in which I came close to pleading her to silence. In fear that she would pass in just the effort exerted in speaking. "My beautiful bronze boy." She whispered. Her tone almost apologetic. I smiled shyly under her weak touch. My worry and love for her sharing equal parts in my mind.

With the slam of a trunk, my mother's hand dropped back to her side, and Miriam entered the car. Grasping the steering wheel in almost a panic stricken way. "Are we ready?" She grunted in her usual uninterested tone. "Yes." I murmured weakly. The slight pressure that was building quite rapidly in my head making it almost impossible to keep my eyes open. I glance slowly over to my mother. Whom was already slumped over in her seat. Asleep.

Allowing my eyes to close slowly, I was yet again taken by the blackness that took the world around us away for a period to short. Some where that all could be free of their troubles. For a time.

"Edward?" For the second time today, I wake to the sounding of my name. This time, the voice was smooth, almost velvet like. "Edward, can you open your eyes for me please?" The man's voice asked pleasantly. Patiently. I opened my green eyes slowly. Fluttering them several times to make an attempt at adjusting to the brightly lit room. I recognized the young man that loomed over me instantly. His blond hair, and golden eyes. Dr. Cullen. The man that was only several years older than I smiled. Clicking on a small light and speaking to me. Not that I heard him this time. His face, the scents, lighting, just the feel of the room brought back the moments just weeks previous. When my father was here alive. but barely.

I met the doctor's gaze obediently. Knowing exactly what he expected of me. Without his even asking of me. A talent that had always impressed most. The man look surprised, but did not object when I tilted my head back slowly, knowing just from regular appointments all through childhood that this made it easiest to detect anything within the eyes, nostrils, or mouth. Not having the slightest idea of the actual distraction and pain that I had just caused the young doctor unintentionally.

The young man lifted the light to my eye. Flashing it's uncomfortable brightness into it. Seeming unhappy with the results. He pulled away. turning toward the young woman that stood behind him. Prosumably a nurse. "Give the boy a cot next to Mrs. Masen. I think that would make her the happiest. and get both of them the supplies that patients need for long term stay. Elizabeth already has the Influenza thoroughly. I thas taken into her system. Her system is still fighting it. But not with many wins. The trip here did wonders for the virus. The boy, her son has developed the secondary signs that the virus gives. The same stage in which his father was at when he was brought in." The man glanced over his shoulder to look at me once more. Shaking his pale head. "Poor child." He whispered. Walking abruptly out of the room.

The young nurse lead me quickly to a small cot. Positioned next to my mother's. She lay asleep. Twitching and sweat ridden. I lay down next to her. Turning so that my back was facing the blan white wall. Allowing worry, dread, and over all sickness to flow through me. My fight to hide what I had been since I realized what I had caught from my mother, just as quickly as she had over. The stage in which his father was in when he was brought in. Something about Dr. Cullen's words stuck with me, and bothered my there.

I glanced at the nurse from my cot. Not bothering to move far. Wanting not to catch her attention. Apparently I was not sucsessful. She turned slowly. Her dark face turned up in thin smile. "Oh, your awake Mr. Cullen." She whispered almost uncomfortably. Shifting her weight between her feet as she continued working with the papers that she had been shuffling before she noticed me. I smiled graciously. Bowing my head. "Thank you." I whispered, to be shocked by the raspiness and cracking that made it up. Maybe giving in on hiding it meant more than I thought that it did. Was the thought that ran through my mind.

These next couple of weeks progressed exactly like this, Marilu, the nurse, whose name I quickly learned through Dr. Cullen asking her things. Would come in daily, check mother and I's vitals, and ask us how we were when we awoke when she was there. Which was much more of an occurance with me than with my mother. Though she would be up and about when awake, helping the nurse with anything there was to be done with me. Who, in giving up, had began to sink deeply, and quickly into the depths of the illness. I knew, just from a simple glace at my mother whenever she was up and about she shouldn't be. Her buises that started out light and relatively harmless, something that anyone would have, when not covered. To deep trenches in which her paling eyes had sunk into. Deep shadows surrounding them.

I held my tongue in telling her to stop. Knowing my own stubornness, and knowing that hers was mine, only magnified, and she would do nothing that she was ordered. Making her,to most, a less than ideal wife.

I knew exactly when they gave up on us. All but Dr. Cullen at least. He worked vigorously to do whatever he could to save us. No less than ninety percent of the time that he was in the hospital, he was either at my side, or my mother's. It was only two weeks into us being there, and the hospital had already given out on us. Most where here for up to two months before anyone began giving out on them. Not the best of signs. Mother was getting up less and less as the days went on. Breathing becoming more and more labored even with just standing for just a few moments, with help. something that would have done nothing but tire her slightly. Even in the midst of this all, of her closeness to death. The only thing that she cared for was me. Concerned with my well fare. The days for me just folded together one day just like the other. The same rutine, the same cot. The only thing that changed was my worsening syntoms.


	2. Dying Wish

Carlisle's POV

I didn't want to. I had promised myself that when I started medical training that I would never get attached. Never get to close to the patient. Especially in times like this when life was so fragile. Perfectly fine the day. The next: death. Thinking about this one day: at home. The hardest time of the day. So many souls that were dying just due to the fact that there weren't enough eyes, enough hands to help. So many already in the morgue that didn't have to be there. That with just a few more hands, could have had a chance at life. And I had to sit in the dark for eight hours, pretending to sleep.

In my first beliefs, it was nothing more than pity for the newly widowed woman, and the fatherless boy. But when the ward came to realize that they weren't going to make it, it is only now that I realize that it was a deeper connection of looking into the boy who I now know has the same name as his father. Edward Anthony.

It was yet another frozen Chicago morning in mid-February that I walked into the hospital intensive care unit, to be rushed upon by Marilee, the also widowed nurse, that was the only left that hadn't taken ill. "Elizabeth Masen and the boy..." She began, her voice strained as though she feared my still delayed reaction.

I didn't wait for her to continue before I rushed to the final door at the end of the hall, a single room, crowded with cots, but I knew the ones in which I was in search for, for I had been there so many times in the past weeks. I slow to a slightly more human pace as I enter the small, claustrophobic little room. The air as heavy with the scent of sickness, many of those whom had begun to treat those early patients had come down with the Influenza ended out ill with it as well in this room. My thoughts of the past ended abruptly when I came to the cots of Mrs. Masen and her teenage son. Fate had been cruel to them both with the loss of a husband and a father in the first strain of it, but it was clear now that Elizabeth had only hours left of her life, if even that. Her fever had raged out of control for days now, many had given out on the poor Cullen widow and her son.

I had worked diligently _until the end_ is what I had promised myself, and it looked now, that the end had finally come for this poor boy and is mother.

I knelt slowly by the mother's cot, her green eyes fluttering open weakly, I took her hand soundlessly, surprised when she didn't pull back. "Save him..." She whispered hoarsely. The pressure in her grip causing to me to doubt my own judgment on her health momentarily.

"I...I...I'll do everything that I can Ma'am." I promised slowly. Looking the woman in the eyes as she opened her mouth again. The determination in her eyes once more, shocking me.

"The others have done everything that _they_ can. You must do everything in _your_ power." She whispered stubbornly.

I nearly took a step back as I looked at this woman, never before had anyone said that to me, never before had someone sounded so much like they new exactly what I was. "I...I will Mrs. Masen, I promise." I murmured as he breath caught in her throat momentarily, before letting it out slowly for the last time in this life... I don't know whether it was his mother's dying wish, or the helpless look that Edward held on his face at the moment I looked over to him after his mother died, but I took Mrs. Masen down to the morgue quickly, before slipping back upstairs into that little room. My shift was supposedly over, but I wasn't leaving alone tonight...


	3. A treatment no other doctor can give

**Disclaimer- I own nothing! Stephenie Meyer owns the characters and settings!**

Edward's POV,

I awoke slowly, to my pulse pounding in my head as I shifted my head slowly from side to side. Examining my new surroundings. I had been moved since the last time that I had been awake. _How long was I asleep? _Was a thought that came to mind in the midst of my confusion. I felt the sweat beading up on my face and body, as I wondered absently how much time I had left...

My thought process was interrupted with the clicking of footsteps that symbolized that I was not alone in this dark room. It grew louder as they approached, slowly at first. My tense muscles made a valiant attempt to tense, but were to weak to do much more than twitch feebly. It was the warm chuckle of Dr. Cullen that finally sent a wave of calm- along with some out right confusion throughout my body. I turned my head slightly, sucking in a breath at the effort it took to do no more than that. Dr. Cullen was stationed beside my makeshift cot. His welcome smile in which had been on his face when I eyes first saw him, had flattened out completely into a rather grim line.

"Hello, Edward." He whispered warmly. Watching with unsurprised and almost bored eyes as I jumped at the sound of my name. "Welcome to my home. The hospital was...No longer able to take care of you in your...condition." He murmured. Glaring somewhat apprehensively at my throat as he did so.

I smile weakly. Allowing the pure confusion to show through my eyes. There was nothing here that could be used as a treatment, nothing. As though having read my mind, Dr. Cullen's grim line of the lips opened once more. "I am to preform one last treatment on you Edward. This will be the last treatment that I will ever give." He murmured. A bubble of panic arouse in my throat, the last treatment? What on earth does he mean, there is no possible way that this was the last thing that I would ever need anything else done to me... It was just...An impossibility. _Unless he plans to kill you. _A dark voice in the back of my whispered. "The last treatment that you will ever need, what I am going to do to you is different in many, many ways from what the other doctors have dome with you and the other patients. What I am going to do Edward, no other doctor in the hospital can do. This treatment will hurt, but will be eternally effective..." He whispered in a tone that was barely audible to my ears.

Slowly, slowly, the doctor put his hand on the side of my neck, bring his other down so that it was nearly at the top of my head, locking my head tightly into place. At an even slower pace than the one in which he had brought his hand down, his head dipped down toward my neck, pressing his frigid lips against my skin, I yelped in a raspy voice. The piercing pain the suddenly erupted in my neck as though his teeth had punctured it. I amended that thought quickly, _as_ the doctor punctured my throat with his teeth. The burning came on immediately. What started off as only a sting of teeth being pushed through my skin, quickly spread throughout my body and became more of a burning sensation that was on going. The fire growing worse as it rounded every corner within my body. "It will not be long before it is over for you Edward..." Was the last thing that I heard Dr. Cullen say before I succumbed to the pain and blackness that awaited me...

A/N

I'm so sorry that it is not very long, I know! But I have some writer's block problems that have been showing up a lot lately, and I have tried to leave my writing at a place were I can hopefully pick it up again either tomorrow (which might not be, I'm supposed to be _really _busy tomorrow) or maybe Friday.

Reviews make me smile.


	4. Awake

The pain had finally ceased. The burning that had seemed to go on forever. Dr. Cullen had spoken to me throughout the entire thing, I could recall nothing but his voice. _He should be waking anytime now...._ Dr. Cullen's voice penetrates my thoughts.

"Edward, can you sit up for me?" The doctor asked quietly as I fluttered my eyes, taken aback by the brightness of everything around me. Stretching my hands slowly, I braced them against the cot, expecting torturous the effort which it had taken to sit up what felt like ages ago. Astonished at how little effort to do something that had been so difficult for the past weeks. "How are you Edward?" Dr. Cullen asked.

"Fine." I whispered. Cringing back sightly wondering absently way he felt the need to talk so loudly... I watching the man carefully. Unsure of what my next move was meant to be. The burning that held in the back of my throat demanding to be sated. "My throat..." I asked slowly. Not having to finish my question before he jumped up. '

"Oh, of course! Come Edward." He answered. Looking almost embarrassed, like he had forgotten something vitally important in my treatment. _How could I have forgotten about the boy's thirst? That should have been the first thing I did before even thinking about asking him any questions- oh goodness, the boy's looking at me like I am insane. _He said quietly. I watched him as he 'spoke' in wonder. He did so while barely moving his lips.

"I am still here you know." I growled. Annoyance at the fact he was referring to me as the 'boy' with my standing directly in front of me.

Dr. Cullen looked surprised at my statement, "Of course my boy." He said with a confused smile. _What in earth is he talking about? _He continued.

"That!" I all but yelled. "Talking as though I am not standing directly in front of you!" I growled. Confusing myself, I had heard him, right?

"Edward...What on earth are you talking about? I'm afraid...That I have no idea what you are talking about." _Is he alright?_

"Yes, I am alright." I sighed. _Maybe you're just going insane. _A voice whispered.

"Wh...Edward, what did you just say?" He asked. His face surprised, but not angry.

"You were wondering whether or not I was well." I murmured. Just as confused as the man in front of me. "That's what you said." I whispered.

"Edward, I didn't say that." He whispered. _There's no way, but there's no other way... He must have Aro's abilities, but so much stronger. _

"Who is Aro?" I asked slowly. Getting the idea of what this man was thinking I could do. Ignoring my question, he looked into my eyes sternly. _Can you hear me? _He ordered. Bracing his hands against my arms. "Yes." I whispered. Slightly panicked.

"Absolutely fascinating..." He murmured.

"Dr. Cullen...?" _Please call me Carlisle, Edward, there is no need for such formality in my home. _I nodded slowly. "Carlisle, what do you mean?" I asked slowly. Feeling foolish by just asking the question, I knew what he meant, I just needed him to say it, to make it possible.

"Edward, there are many things that I have to explain to you in the next several hours, one of them being that some of us, have an...extra ability. We just discovered yours." He whispered. Hesitating before continuing, "Mind reading."

**A/N **

**I am SO sorry that it took so long for me to update! It feels like I haven't worked on this story in ages! Thank you all so much for reading.**

**Reviews make me smile.**


	5. Important author's note!

**I'm sorry guys, no chapter.**

**I have been neglecting my duties up update in pretty much all of my stories. I promise that I will try to pick up my face on updating, sadly I won't be able to update for about a week after thursday night. It's spring break, and I'm going to be quite busy. Have a spring nice break guys!**

**XxGreenEyedAngelxX**


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